dotage, she came back,
police or no police.... This was a climax to which the people were
unprepared to submit, not that they were any more virtuous than their
Sovereign." Another publicist, Edward Maurice, puts it a little
differently: "In Bavaria the power exercised by Lola Montez over
Ludwig had long been distasteful to the sterner reformers." This was
true enough; but the Muencheners disliked the Jesuits still more,
asserting that it was with them that Lola shared the conscience of the
King. The Liberals were ready for action, and welcomed the opportunity
of asserting themselves.

As soon as Lola was really out of the country, her Barerstrasse
mansion was searched from attic to cellar by the Munich police. Since,
in order to justify the search, they had to discover something
compromising, they announced that they had discovered "proofs" that
Lord Palmerston and Mazzini were in active correspondence with the
King's ex-mistress; and that the go-between for the British Foreign
Office was a Jew called Loeb. This individual was an artist who had
been employed to decorate the house. Seized with pangs of remorse, he
is said to have gone to Ludwig and confessed having intercepted Lola's
correspondence with Mazzini and engineered the rioting. He further
declared that large sums of money had been sent her from abroad.
Historians, however, have no knowledge of this; nor was the nature of
the "proofs" ever revealed.

Lola's villa in the Barerstrasse afterwards became the new home of the
British Legation. It was demolished in 1914; and not even a wall
plaque now marks her one-time occupancy. As for the Residenz Palace
where she dallied with Ludwig, this building is now a museum, and as
such echoes to the tramp of tourists and the snapping of cameras. _Sic
transit_, etc.

II

When Lola, hunted from pillar to post, eventually left Munich for
Switzerland, it was in the company of Auguste Papon, who, on the
grounds of "moral turpitude," had already been given his
marching-orders. He described himself as a "courier." His passport,
however, bore the less exalted description of "cook." It was probably
the more correct one. The faithful Fritz Peissner, anxious to be of
service to the woman he loved, and for whom he had already risked his
life, joined her at Constance, together with two other members of the
_Alemannia_, Count Hirschberg and Lieutenant Nussbaum. But they only
stopped a few days.

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